Ba Ngoai Has Something to Say (Grandparental)

Lyrics

[Intro]

[Verse 1]
Bà Ngoại is smoothing out a piece of foil on the kitchen table.
Her knuckles are small, hard knots of wood.
She saves every bit of it.
Folds it into a neat, silver square.
Same as the rubber bands, the glass jars, the lengths of string.
A quiet archive of having less.
She hums a song from a country I have never seen.
Her love was not a storybook.
It was a well-kept pantry.

[Chorus]
She has something to say, but not with her mouth.
The lesson is in the way she peels an orange, all in one long spiral.
The lesson is in the pressure of her thumb against a stubborn seam.
She says, love is not a word you spend.
She says, love is a thing you mend, and mend, and mend again.

[Verse 2]
This house was the only place in the world where I was not afraid.
It smelled of cedar chests and Tiger Balm.
The world outside was sharp, but in here...
In here was the weight of her hand-stitched quilt.
Each patch a piece of a dress I outgrew, a shirt my father wore in 1982.
Each stitch, another year she made it through.
A quiet archive of holding on.

[Chorus]
She has something to say, but not with her mouth.
The lesson is in the way she peels an orange, all in one long spiral.
The lesson is in the pressure of her thumb against a stubborn seam.
She says, love is not a word you spend.
She says, love is a thing you mend, and mend, and mend again.

[Bridge]
I used to wait for the wisdom.
The grand pronouncements over tea.
I thought love was a lecture.
But the sermon was in the silence.
The stardust was just dust, dancing in a sunbeam by her chair.
And the quiet joke is, I heard her perfectly all along.

[Outro]
She looks up from the folded foil.
Her eyes clear.
She pushes it across the table toward me.
She says, “Don’t waste it.”